


Down the Garden Path

by letsgogetlost



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Downton Abbey Kink Meme, M/M, Wall Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-28
Updated: 2012-06-28
Packaged: 2017-11-08 18:40:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/446282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letsgogetlost/pseuds/letsgogetlost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thomas and Branson may or may not be friends, but they do have an understanding, and a favored private place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down the Garden Path

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Downton Abbey Kink Meme](http://dakinkmeme.livejournal.com/673.html?), filling a request for "any pair, wall sex: Pretty much what I said. I don't care if it's het or slash of either variety. It just needs to be up against a wall, the steamier the better."

There were not many places one could be truly alone at Downton Abbey, especially not when you were among the servants’ ranks, but Thomas liked to think that he knew all of them - all the places without clear sight lines or with creaky floor boards, where you could sneak a smoke or slip something into your pocket without anyone noticing, all the places you could get up to a bit of trouble without anyone being able to sneak up on you. The path below the kitchen garden was a particular favourite. No one went down there, it was only a cut-through from the kitchen to the stable yard and garage, nothing down there but an old rubbish tip that not even the gardeners used anymore, and the narrow path - and, truly, it was easier to just go inside if you were trying to get from one end of the service wing to the other. But it was secluded, and protected, with no one coming down there, and the path hemmed in on one side by the wall of the kitchen garden and on the other by thick, rabbit-infested woods. It was good for one’s purposes, if one was Thomas Barrow, and one had certain things one wanted to get up to, or one just didn’t want to share one’s cigarettes with Sarah O’Brien, for once.

It was the smell of the cigarette smoke that finally seemed to catch Tom Branson’s attention - that or the feeling of Thomas’s eyes on his back. Thomas had been about to give up, there was only so much time one could disappear from one’s work, even in a house as big as Downton, without people asking where you’d been. But finally the chauffeur did look up from his newspaper, and turned enough to see the dark-liveried, dark-haired man lurking half behind the doorway to the wooded path. Thomas stubbed out his cigarette on the door to the stable court and motioned down the path with a curt nod, then disappeared; the chauffeur looked around, then followed. He found Thomas halfway up the path, smoking another cigarette already and leaning nonchalantly against the rough kitchen wall, as though he wouldn’t have to brush brick dust off every inch of his back before he went inside. 

“What do you want?” the chauffeur asked.

Thomas raised his eyebrows and gave him one of his more infuriating smiles. “Do you have to ask?.” Tom Branson was as in love with Sybil Crawley as he was Irish, but he knew that was fruitless long before the footman had pointed it out, and he and Thomas had an understanding, of sorts. A gentleman’s agreement, if you could call either of them gentlemen. Thomas took a drag then gestured at the other man’s hands. “But wipe off the oil first, this time.”

Branson didn’t, and he had those oily hands on Thomas almost at once, pinning both the footman’s narrow wrists to the wall above his head. “Idiot,” Thomas hissed. “You’ve made me drop my fag.”

Branson smiled, then, and it turned from a teasing grin, the look of a boy in a scuffle, to something smaller, more private, more dangerous. A look not many people had the pleasure of seeing. 

Thomas rolled his eyes. “You owe me, then,” the footman said, with far more dignity than his position merited.

Now Branson repeated the eyeroll, mocking. He was the only person in all of Yorkshire, possibly all the world, that could take the piss out of Thomas Barrow and get away with it. He was already close to the other man, but now he leaned in closer. “It’s my turn,” he said - but really, he should’ve known better than to boss Thomas around. He certainly knew how strong the other man could be, and how slippery, even when his wrists weren’t coated in oil. Thomas may have be thinner than Branson, but he was strong and tall and he knew how to fight; soon had the chauffeur was the one pinned against the wall, cheek against the brick. 

“Whose turn is it, then?”

Branson laughed. “Mine. Fair’s fair, Barrow.”

Thomas released him. “Don’t know why I even came.”

Branson grinned at him. They both knew exactly why he’d come. He brushed off his hands on his coverall, then reached out, hand wrapping around Thomas’s hip. Thomas frowned at him, but they both knew he’d been beaten. They had an agreement, after all. Branson pushed; Thomas stepped back and hit the wall, a bit harder than Branson had needed him to. The shorter man pushed forward, both hands on the footman’s hips, now, pressing him against the brick. His hands wandered, across Thomas’s waist and stomach, down towards his trousers - but then he pulled back, and stripped quickly, tossing his coverall aside to reveal his own livery beneath it. He wasn’t going to listen to Thomas’s whining if he got oil on his waistcoat. When he looked back Thomas was leaning against the wall, all nonchalance again, but less well-executed this time - the flush in his cheeks gave him away. Branson stepped forward again, and his hands kept up their travels, along the hard muscles stretched across Thomas’s pelvis, then around, where he grabbed the footman’s buttocks, hands quick and forceful, pulling him away from the wall so their bodies knocked together. 

Thomas smiled a small curl of a smile, mocking the awkwardness of it. You could not fault the man’s eagerness, however. He reached out and wrapped his arms around the other man, but there was something cold in the touch, in the way Thomas held himself away from Branson’s body, not embracing him even as his hands traced a leisurely line from the middle of Branson’s back to the top of his ass. Both of them stood still and silent for a moment before Thomas pounced, pulling Branson close again, with more grace, and kissing him forcefully, but briefly, hands moving again, with more purpose now, across the stiff fabric of the chauffeur’s trousers. They found what they were looking for and squeezed gently; Branson’s shoulders tensed, stomach tightened, and he took control again, turning Thomas away even as the dark-haired man leaned in and nipped at his ear. Even if they were in this for themselves, they knew what the other liked.

Thomas turned willingly and leaned against the wall again, waiting while Branson fumbled with his own uniform, turning just enough so the other man could see his smile, the edge of his sharp teeth peeking out between his lips. He was getting impatient, but he let it be, let Branson finish getting himself out before reaching around to undo Thomas’s buttons, slipping his trousers down just enough that they wouldn’t get in the way. “Ready?” Thomas finally asked, letting a sneer creep into his voice, knowing it would only annoy Branson - but that wasn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world, as Branson proved by grabbing Thomas again, hands firm on his stomach, pressing his bare skin against Thomas’s, the feeling of warmth on warmth pleasant in the coolness of the garden wall’s shadow. 

“Yes,” Branson murmured. There was a growl in it - Thomas liked that. Tom Branson hardly ever let the thread of ire in him show, for all his dissident attitudes. But Thomas knew it was there, and that was maybe what he and the chauffeur had the most in common. That, and this.

Branson’s cock was hard against the skin of Thomas’s ass; it didn’t take much to get him excited, just the few well-placed touches, but then Thomas was the same, already hard as the wall he was pressed against, that Branson, after a spit and a rub and an exploratory fingering, pressed him against with more force. Thomas cushioned his head with one hand and reached back to hold onto Branson with the other, gripping at his ass as Branson entered him, but made no sound - he never did, not like the chauffeur, who always bit back a breath then, who sighed now and reached around again, hands finding the soft flesh just above Thomas’s hips and holding him loosely, keeping him still as he moved, began so slowly to thrust. Thomas glanced back to see the other man’s closed eyes, tight-set mouth, and smiled, closing his own eyes, concentrating on the warm, almost gentle grasp of Branson’s hands, the roughness of the wall, the urging of his own erection, and then that pinprick of pleasure, found again, coursing through his body and tugging on him, tightening muscles and organs, sending rushes of blood to his flushed face and to his cock, which Branson finally, mercifully, remembered; one of his hands left Thomas’s waist and shot down, pushing Thomas’s underthings away, exploring then holding on to his cock before he pushed again, harder, both of them pressing their weight into the wall, Thomas pinned between brick and flesh, garden and the wilds beyond, and being pushed, again and again, into the wall and pressure of the chauffeur’s hand.

Branson was panting now, trying to keep his breath and his voice in; their trysting place might have been private, but it was hardly isolated, and it wouldn’t do to have strange noises creeping over the wall into the kitchen garden, even if both of them were sure no one was there at that hour, when all the kitchen staff would be occupied inside. He gulped down air and pressed again, a final foray, Thomas could feel it in the beat of Branson’s pulse and the damp heat radiating out as pressed his forehead against the footman’s shoulder, bracing himself while Thomas pressed out from the wall, using it for leverage, moving into Branson’s rhythm and swallowing a moan of his own as Branson choked back one, two, three small gasps of pleasure and then came, the moment shuddering through him and leaving him limp, holding himself up against the other man, who shifted against the wall, opened his eyes, and smiled. “All right?” he asked; Branson eased out of him and stepped back, then collapsed to lean beside Thomas, eyes closed, head back against the bricks. He attempted several deep breaths.

“Yes.”

Thomas rested his forehead against the wall once more, only for the briefest moment, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it touch of relaxation before he flipped around, back to the wall, and greeted Branson with another self-satisfied smile. “Well?”

Branson opened his eyes and frowned at Thomas. “Yes?” But he knew well enough what it was about; he took another steadying breath then sighed, and looked down. Thomas’s front was coated in a thin layer of brick dust, but he had to be an expert on getting that off his livery by now. His trousers and pants were still down, and with one hand he was toying with his own, very insistent erection. Branson reached down and brushed Thomas’s hand away, and began ministering to him himself, running his fingers up and down the other man’s cock, teasing out a touch more excitement, an incremental hardness that had not been there before. Then he knelt and licked his own lips before doing the same to Thomas’s cock, running tongue where fingers had just been. One of his hands guided; the other held onto Thomas’s hipbone, keeping him from pushing too hard as Branson took his cock into his mouth and the footman began to press forward, back arching off the wall, head rolling back. The footman let out a small sigh, the first sound he had made except to tease, and his hand wrapped itself in Branson’s hair, alternately stroking and tugging softly as the chauffeur saw to him with lips and tongue and a very deft hand. Thomas was the one shuddering now, his body tensing from his toes to the crown of his head, his shoulders pushing hard into the wall as he pressed his hips closer to Branson, his heart beating so hard it felt like it might burst - but it didn’t, it never did, and he then he moaned, once, long and low, a moment before he came. Branson turned away and spat, and smiled vaguely at the ground beside him. He liked that noise, that moment - it was one of his favorite things about their little agreement - being able to hear Thomas Barrow, the iciest, most detached, least human man he had ever known, make a noise that was not only truly human, but animal, a sound of true release, of base instinct and, maybe strangest of all, pleasure. It proved he was human. And it proved Tom Branson had some skill with his hands and his body beyond that needed to repair a motor and hold the door of the motor for the lord and ladies of the household.

Branson sat back on his heels and looked up; Thomas was slouching against the wall, eyes closed. He liked that too, those few unguarded moments that it seemed only a good fuck could bring out. Then Thomas ran a hand over his face, though, and when it had passed he was there again, back perfectly straight, self-satisfied look in his eyes - if he hadn’t neglected to pull up his trousers, he would have been the perfect picture of the ambitious, selfish footman everyone knew him to be. Branson stood and tugged up Thomas’s trousers before buttoning his own. There was a silence, both of them looking away and fixing themselves, Branson smoothing out his hair and wiping away sweat and other materials from his face, Thomas brushing off his jacket and waistcoat. They looked back up at the same moment, and their eyes met; Branson smiled, slow and wry. Thomas nodded. They left it at that, Thomas making his way back towards the kitchen door and his work with sure, quick steps, Branson taking his time to wander back to the garage and the interminable wait until someone needed the car or it was time for dinner, whichever came first.


End file.
